Women
Author: Chloé Caldwell
Published by: 4th Estate
Pages: 142
Format: Paperback
My Rating: ★★★
Published by: 4th Estate
Pages: 142
Format: Paperback
My Rating: ★★★
A young woman moves from the countryside to the city.
Inexorably and immediately, she falls in love with another woman for the first time in her life.
Finn is nineteen years older than her, wears men’s clothes, has a cocky smirk of a smile – and a long -term girlfriend.
With precision, wit and tenderness, Women charts the frenzy and the fallout of love.
Inexorably and immediately, she falls in love with another woman for the first time in her life.
Finn is nineteen years older than her, wears men’s clothes, has a cocky smirk of a smile – and a long -term girlfriend.
With precision, wit and tenderness, Women charts the frenzy and the fallout of love.
My thoughts:
This was selected as the August read for a monthly book club I attend. Chloé Caldwell’s Women explores sexual confusion and female friendship, as well as being a woman and a daughter. The story is about falling in love, falling out of love and being consumed with heart break.
It is a tale about a love affair and intimacy between women. The book is written in first person in a choppy and immediate style in the present tense. Whilst most people seem to refer to Women as a novella, at many points in the book I found myself wondering if this was a memoir or a work of fiction. The writing felt so deeply personal to the author.
Women is a very literary book and speaks loudly without saying a lot. I was gripped by the stream of consciousness on the page and how Caldwell fully immersed me into the mind of the protagonist.
Overall, I enjoyed this novella and I finished it in one sitting. I found the writing completely absorbing, and I think the book powerfully explored and touched on many different themes in such few pages. I just wish there was more development of the supporting characters and how they affected our main character because their introductions were initially so powerful, yet they lacked development as the story progressed.
I think the author wrote beautifully about sexual awakenings and mental health in particular, but I just didn’t feel what I wanted to feel when I read it. When originally first released in 2014, I think the themes discussed in Caldwell's writing probably felt much more intense and secretive, but now that there is so much more queer reading available, it didn't feel truly individual or powerful enough to linger in my mind for very long afterwards. This was intriguing and enjoyable for such a short read, but I can’t help but feel that the book was missing a little something.
Overall reaction:
This was selected as the August read for a monthly book club I attend. Chloé Caldwell’s Women explores sexual confusion and female friendship, as well as being a woman and a daughter. The story is about falling in love, falling out of love and being consumed with heart break.
It is a tale about a love affair and intimacy between women. The book is written in first person in a choppy and immediate style in the present tense. Whilst most people seem to refer to Women as a novella, at many points in the book I found myself wondering if this was a memoir or a work of fiction. The writing felt so deeply personal to the author.
Women is a very literary book and speaks loudly without saying a lot. I was gripped by the stream of consciousness on the page and how Caldwell fully immersed me into the mind of the protagonist.
Overall, I enjoyed this novella and I finished it in one sitting. I found the writing completely absorbing, and I think the book powerfully explored and touched on many different themes in such few pages. I just wish there was more development of the supporting characters and how they affected our main character because their introductions were initially so powerful, yet they lacked development as the story progressed.
I think the author wrote beautifully about sexual awakenings and mental health in particular, but I just didn’t feel what I wanted to feel when I read it. When originally first released in 2014, I think the themes discussed in Caldwell's writing probably felt much more intense and secretive, but now that there is so much more queer reading available, it didn't feel truly individual or powerful enough to linger in my mind for very long afterwards. This was intriguing and enjoyable for such a short read, but I can’t help but feel that the book was missing a little something.
Overall reaction:
